Arrangements described herein relate to electronic conferencing.
Examples of electronic conferences include web conferences and instant messaging (IM). The use of electronic conferences has grown significantly over the last decade, facilitated by the proliferation of communication networks, such as the Internet and mobile communication networks, and increases in available bandwidth. These services are valuable tools in the present communication age.
Web conferencing is a service that allows conferencing events to be shared with remote locations. In general, the service is made possible by Internet technologies, particularly on TCP/IP connections. Web conferencing allows real-time point-to-point communications as well as multicast communications from one sender to many receivers during a Web conference. Further, Web conferencing offers information, such as text based messages, voice and video chat to be simultaneously shared across geographically dispersed locations.
IM is a form of communication in which text-based messages are transmitted from a sender to one or more receivers in real-time via a communication network. In this regard, IM may include point-to-point communications from the sender to a single user, as well as multicast communications from the sender to multiple users. An IM message may include one or more attachments, such as documents, images, audio/video files, etc. Sometimes IM is implemented via IM clients on respective client devices that provide a user interface for users to generate/send IM messages, and to receive and view IM messages sent by other users. Other times IM is implemented using a chat session hosted on a server that supports the exchange of IM messages among users, for example in a chat room. A dedicated IM client typically is not required to access a chat room. Instead, users may access a chat room using a typical web browser.